


The Pirate's Progress

by Erinya



Category: Pirates of the Caribbean (Movies), Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest (2006)
Genre: Folklore, Gen, Literary Allusions, Mythology - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2007-12-17
Updated: 2007-12-17
Packaged: 2017-10-29 04:39:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 5
Words: 9,389
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/315918
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Erinya/pseuds/Erinya
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Jack's adventures in the Underworld, post-Kraken.  A more or less light-hearted romp through the afterlife, with apologies to John Bunyan, the Divine Comedy, the Odyssey, and other works of actual literature.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Down Among The Dead Men

**Author's Note:**

> What began as giftfic for LadyMouse in the Black Pearl Sails Secret Santa exchange became a five-part journey that took a calendar year to finish. Thanks owed to virgo_79 for the second epigraph.

"To die would be an awfully big adventure."

\-- _Peter Pan_ , J. M. Barrie

 _"Nothing is certain until you are dead, and even then I'm sure God negotiates."_

\--Anjelica Huston, _Ever After_

  
 _It wasn't so bad, dying. Simple, really. Nothing to it._

 _Well, that was technically a lie. It was bad: pain like thunder, and the sick crush of bones and flesh, before his brain shorted out in splinters of white-hot light. But only for a moment, and the darkness was a mercy, and there would be no more running, only rest..._

  


  
**I.  
Down Among the Dead Men**   


  


When he came to himself, with mild surprise--he hadn't been sure there would be any himself to come to, despite all those things in heaven and earth, Horatio, that he'd seen and dealt with and cheated, too, up 'til now--he was standing on a field of greyish sand, and the light was queer: twilight or underwater, no hint of sun or moon.

Inventory. He found that he was breathing, and there were no wounds, no marks on him but the scars he'd always worn. No pain, not even from the host of aches and bruises earned in his last few frantic days. He wasn't (or hadn't been?) as young as he once was, though it wasn't a thing to be admitted even to himself, and it was almost a shock to not feel that toll now, in his joints, in his blood, in his bones. Check the goods: still there. Praise be. Wouldn't do to be a eunuch for eternity. And he'd still got his hat.

Not so bad at all, then, this being dead; if that's what this was.

He tipped his head back. There were stars up there all right, feeble and faint; but they were all wrong, and that gave him a turn. These were no earthly constellations. Nothing to get a bearing from, nothing to chart his way. The weird unlight seemed to emanate from the sand itself, and from the dull sky, and the sand stretched forever, seeming to blend with the horizon; or maybe there were no horizons here, and that thought gave him another turn, worse than the first.

"So this is the Locker," he said out loud, just to hear words and to stave off the panicky boxed-in feeling that had wrapped chilly fingers 'round his heart, though that meant he still had one, which was a bit of a comfort anyway. "Not much to look at, is it? Definitely lacking in that woman's touch. No surprise there, of course... But ol' Davy ought to get around to decorating the place one of these days--make a nice change from the soul trade--"

Here he stopped short, in part because he realized he was babbling, but mostly because some of the dark grey lumps a little ways from him on the light grey sand, that he had taken for rocks, had straightened up and turned their heads to look at him.

So it wasn't an _empty_ locker, after all.

"Who're you?" demanded a voice, quite close at his shoulder, and he jumped and yelped before he can help himself; and then capered and yelped again, nonchalantly, before he turned, on the theory that whoever was behind him should think that it was a quirk, and not that he was startled in the slightest.

"Why, I'm Captain Jack Sparrow," he said, squinting at the speaker: a worn sailor with a perpetual scowl, a sallow face, and a long scar down one side of his face. "Don't tell me you've never heard of me."

"Never did hear of you," snapped the other. "You're new, aren't you? Fame won't get ye far here, scabbie. And as you can see, there be nothing for ye to captain, here. No sea, no ships. Get used to it."

"No sea," Jack said, blankly.

"That's right." The scar-faced man guffawed suddenly, toothless and mirthless. "Welcome to Hell, Jack Sparrow!"

Other shades had gathered around them as they spoke, drawn more perhaps by the promise of novelty than anything else, and at these words they broke out into laughter, too, an eerie, raucous noise that sent a cold prickling sensation down Jack's spine.

"Thanks, mate." Jack grimaced, backing away from the man, and felt a sudden tug at his jacket; he yelped again, and craned his head about.

But it was only a little African boy, no older than eight or nine, barefoot and as ragged as the other; he wore a red kerchief around his neck and a battered tambourine tied to his salt-stained sash. "Please, mister," he said. "Are you a pirate, mister? You look like a pirate."

"I am indeed," Jack said, relieved by this small modicum of recognition. "And a jolly good one at that, I assure you."

"I always wanted to meet a pirate," said the boy, in proper tones of awe.

"Well, now you have." Jack smiled, dropping to a crouch to put himself on the boy's level. "What's your name, then, sailor?"

"My name's Pip, sir," says the lad. He offered his hand, and Jack shook it, gravely.

"So where did a fine young man like yourself go wrong to end up in this blasted place, Pip?"

The boy looked surprised. "Nowhere, sir, but that I died at sea. It's the Locker for them that get no proper burial. Them bein' us, I mean, Mister Sparrow. The ferry won't take those ain't been consecrated 'cross the river."

"Always sounded like a bloody poor system to me," muttered Jack. "Punishing a brave sailor for meeting his end before the mast. Still, there's one good thing about systems, and that's that I never met one I couldn't work to my own ends. Well, with one possible exception, but it doesn't signify.... Pip, where might I find that river you mentioned?"

Pip screwed up his face in concentration before shooting a pointed finger out towards Jack's left. No telling whether it was north, south, east or west, if such directions even existed in this place.

"Ah. Good lad." Jack straightened up, ruffling the boy's curly hair in a distracted fashion as he stared off into the indicated trackless, featureless gloom. "I think I'll go and have myself a spot of negotiation with that ferryman. Not like I don't have the time, eh?"

"'S no use," broke in one of the others, in hollow tones. "He won't take you. Not without you've been blessed, and not without the fare."

Jack eyed him. Most of the sailors appeared more or less solid, but this one blurred at the edges like ink feathered by water, his form misty, near-transparent; he wore the doublet and helmet--the one faded and the other tarnished--of an age long past. Jack found this worrying: was this dematerialization what happened to a man after too many unmarked years in this place? "How do you know?" he challenged. "Have you ever tried it?"

"'Course I haven't tried it! Them's the rules. Everyone knows that."

"Bollocks," said Jack, rather rudely. "Piffle. Twaddle, even. How can you know that you know it won't help to try it if you've never tried not knowing it, and tried it? Answer me that!"

The faded man frowned, wavering quite literally, his lips moving as he tried to work this out.

"That's what I thought," crowed Jack. "Look, you lot! I don't know who makes these bloody stupid rules, but odds are they're more like guidelines anyway. Nothing what a bit of friendly persuasion can't bend, if applied with the correct amount of pressure and perhaps a bit of cunning on the side. But it might be accomplished a mite easier in numbers, if you take my meaning."

Baffled looks all around, a bit of uneasy muttering. "What do ye mean, then?" demanded one bold soul out of the general murmur, apparently elected spokesman in a hasty draw of lots.

"I mean," Jack said, "that we may get over that river yet, mates. And what do you think lies beyond it? Has any man of you not dreamed of that place the songs call Fiddler's Green? Just imagine it, if you can, lads! Can you not see all the fine willing lasses with smiles on their faces? Can you not hear the bright notes of the reel and see the dancers whirling? There's rum that flows like water in that land, my friends, and wine that never runs out, and never leaves you with a sore head in the morning, either." Caught up in his own narrative, he could almost taste it; he licked his dry lips and pressed on. "And the long boards of the tables all but groan with a fine feast the likes of which the likes of _you_ has never seen, I'll wager."

He paused, looking them over: a sorry enough lot, the forsaken and the drowned, but he'd crewed a ship with worse. "And if all else fails, we can't be much more damned than we are now, aye? So let's hear it, then. Are ye with me?"

"Aye!" came the scattered chorus, somewhat doubtful in tone, but Jack was good with that. He rubbed his hands together and grinned at them, pleased as he'd ever been at the beginning of a new venture, however hopeless and however mad. Beating the gods at their own game. Wasn't that what he was best at? With one notable exception; but even that game, he felt just then, might not be entirely up.

No, this death business wasn't half-bad, after all.


	2. The River And The Gate

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Part 2 of Jack's adventures in the Underworld.

"Bugger off," said the ferryman. He turned his head with elaborate disgust and spat, narrowly missing Jack's boots. "I haven't the time, gents."

"Ah! Of course you haven't." Jack waggled a finger at him; the ferryman frowned at it, or perhaps the rings upon it, going a bit cross-eyed. "You're a man of business--Charon, isn't that the name? I thought so--and a fine one at that. But you see, I've got a business proposition for you that you'd be a right fool to pass up."

"Here, get along with you!" hooted some impatient spirit from the back of the queue--"you're holding up the bloody line!"--and an angry swell of voices joined it. The near shore of the river was crowded with the grey huddled masses of the dead, waiting to cross, and there was only one ferry to serve them all.

But Jack's eyes were fixed on Charon's face; and sure enough, he saw the light of greed kindle in the old haunt's hard, squinty eyes.

"All right," said the boatman. "But you'd best make it quick. I've got passengers waiting, see? _Paying_ customers," he added, in tones of utmost significance.

"No worries, mate," Jack assured him smoothly, draping his arm around the hunched shoulders and guiding Charon a little ways apart from the crowd, along the muddy, rocky shore of the river Styx; for surely those slow, oily, evil-looking waters could have no other name. "You'll take more coins from my hand than from any of those poor sods."

"Show me," growled Charon.

"Say no more," said Jack, halting them and turning to face his mark; as he did, he turned his body subtly so that Charon's back was turned to the river and the ancient flat-bottomed barge that lay moored at the quay. "Observe." And he held up a closed fist before Charon's face, uncurling his fingers one by one so that the old man glimpsed the gold in his palm, and then letting it flash between his fingers, lightning-fast; produced another coin from the air, and then another, and another, while his audience of one scowled at him in mingled suspicion and avarice, until Jack held the four dinars out to him and he snatched them away, secreting them in his robes.

"My fee," Jack said, with a smile. "Four times the usual price, if I'm not mistaken. And I'm willing to pay the same for each of my crew," as a fifth coin turned and glinted in his hand and he dared to glance casually over the ferryman's shoulder, checking on the progress of his fellow sailors.

"What's your name?" Charon demanded.

"Jonathan Smith," said Jack, honestly enough if the truth were to be known. "Or Smithy, at your service." He sketched an elegant bow before sidestepping around Charon in a single fluid movement, and when the old demon turned to follow him, he stretched out a boot to trip him--rather neatly if he did say so himself--hearing the splash as Charon hit the sluggish dark water and running headlong for the ferry to leap aboard before it pushed off.

"Bloody pirates!" the ferryman was heard to sputter, thrashing and struggling against the current, towards the shallows.

"Sorry, mate!" Jack called from the stern. "I thought a waterman like yourself would surely know how to swim after a few eons! My mistake. But I did try my level best to lighten your ballast," and he raised the heavy purse he had liberated from Charon's person, the clink of the coins as he shook it a fine counterpoint to the curses of its owner, and to the laughter and cheers of the ferry's new crew.

* * *

"I thought you said there'd be ladies," said young Sandy Miller, glancing around at the empty, rocky shore on the near side of the river, then towards the huge shadowy gate that loomed ahead of them.

"I thought you said there'd be a feast," said Pip, accusingly.

"I thought you said there'd be rum," grumbled a spectacled sailor, ruddy and ginger-haired, who rejoiced (or not) under the name of Smee.

"Steady on, lads," Jack said, alarmed. It seemed neither the time nor the place to remind them he had, in fact, made no such promises. "Just a bit farther now. We've got to get past that gate."

"Ye say that like it'll be easy," sneered the ill-tempered old tar who had first hailed Jack in the Locker. He was called Jonah, and Jack found himself wondering if that white puckered scar across his face was not, in fact, the mark of the great Leviathan's teeth. He supposed he should have some fellow feeling for him if that was the case, but instead he rather wished he could have left him behind. He felt very peculiar indeed when he looked at that scar, and had to push back too-recent memories that writhed up from the depths of his mind, like tentacles.

"What's not easy about it?" he said. "Walk up, ring the bell, walk in. Nothing to it."

"Doesn't sound like much of a plan to me."

Jack rolled his eyes. "And can you think of a better one? Fine. I'll do it meself," and he swaggered towards the gate. The others straggled along some ways behind him. Honestly, he couldn't really blame them. He was half-expecting to see _Abandon hope, all ye who enter here_ inscribed in flaming letters on the iron arch.

There was no inscription, but as he approached, a hulking shadow separated itself from the thick shadows at the gate's base and growled low in its throat.

Throats. Three of them, as it happened. And the thing was as tall as a horse and twice as bulky, with a prehensile tail that darted and coiled as if it had a mind of its own.

"Oh, bugger." Jack stood stock-still as the great hound stalked towards him, hearing only vaguely the startled cries of his followers. Running, he knew, would be worse; flight was merely an invitation to pursuit for a creature that did not know the fear of man. He wished heartily that he had his pistol, just then, but his weapons had been lost somewhere between the Kraken's belly and the Locker; or perhaps they were not permitted here. Not that a pistol would do a great deal against a demon-hound like this one. Besides, put a bullet in its brain and even if it were not immortal it would have two heads to spare, and angry ones at that. "Good doggie…"

The beast was standing over him now, bending its snouts to sniff, hoarse pants filling Jack's ears like thunder. A thick thread of drool dribbled down to soak one shoulder of his coat. Its steaming breath was…well, perhaps not as bad as the foul exhalation of the Kraken, but a worthy competitor in the field of stenches not to be borne. Stale death and fresh, sulphur and saltpeter, like the reek of a ship's deck after pitched battle, no quarter given and the washports bleeding red into the sea.

He swallowed convulsively and shut his eyes, waiting for the inevitable crunch of teeth on bone and wondering if it was possible to die again once you were already dead. But the attack never came. When he opened his eyes again, the three heads had swung away from him, uninterested, and the hound was following a wandering scent back towards the gate in a manner that was ludicrously canine and benign for such a monster.

"There's a good pup," he encouraged it, fanning away the stink. "Go on, then. Good boy."

"Cap'n!" Smee called nervously from behind him. "Did it eat you?"

"It's all right, lads," he shouted back. "Seems the beastie's just charged with the duty of making certain we're good and dead." Yes, that sounded right, a scrap salvaged from a long-ago education: the dread hound who prevented mortals from passing over this Threshold before their time, and who would tear to pieces any spirit who tried to escape.

Suppressing a qualm at that last thought, he stepped forward. Before him, ponderously, the immense gate creaked open of its own accord; and he walked through it, into the Realm of the Dead, while Cerberus turned its jowly heads to watch him go.


	3. The House of Judgment

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Part 3 of Jack's adventures in the Underworld. Jack and his "crew" have made it past the ferryman and the hellhound, but what awaits them beyond the Gates?

There was a road that led out from the Gates of Hell, paved with a dull black stone; and on either side stretched fields of colorless flowers that glowed slightly in the gloom with a pale, greenish phosphorescence. Neither were they alone on that road, nor in that place. Dim flitting shapes crowded thick in the air around them: men and women and children, some of them, but many were shadows without faces, voices without form, cold winds that rose out of nowhere to brush the backs of their necks; and everywhere they heard a low dry murmur, the wordless lamentations of the dead. Jack's little band of pirates huddled close together, their heads bent as if against a gale; but Jack saw the staring whites of their eyes as they glanced around them, and how their steps faltered.

"Keep your heading, lads," he urged them. "Don't go skittish on me now. They're just dead, same as us."

"That's exactly what I don't like about them," shuddered Sandy. He had been a ship's surgeon, a pragmatic and skeptical man of science, a life that had left him entirely unprepared for the adventure on which he now found himself.

"You're not making any sense, mate," Jack said. "Bit foolish to be afraid of ghosts when you are one, aye? They can't hurt us, no more'n we can hurt them. Look at Pip. He's not scared, are you, lad?"

Pip, who had been hanging close beside Jack, shook his head, but his eyes were wide.

"Never mind," Jack said. "We'll be through this lot soon enough, and the sooner the better, but only so long as we keep our wits about us and put one foot in front of the other, savvy?"

"How d'you know?" Jonah asked, pointedly. "This track could lead us somewhere worse. Seems to me your Fiddler's Green is always just out of sight…'Captain.'"

"And it seems to me that you're too sharp for your own good, Jonah," said Jack. "Have a care, or you might cut yourself. But if you don't trust me, why don't we ask this gentleman?" Rather than waiting for an answer, he bounded ahead to accost the greybeard who sat, nodding, at the side of the road. "Ahoy, there, father," he said, bowing, palms together. "Pray, where does this road lead?"

The old man lifted his head, turning it towards Jack's voice; his filmed-over eyes rolled like marbles, independently, and Jack recoiled before he realized that the man was blind. "It leads where all roads lead in the end."

"Oh, yes?" said Jack, encouragingly, to make up for this singularly unencouraging answer. "And where might that be?"

"To the crossroads. To the House of Judgment." The man's hands fluttered in the air, like the flight of birds; Jack knew the gesture intimately, his own hand stirring in sympathy. "Why do you come here?" One claw clutched at Jack's sleeve, and Jack jumped back, startled. "It is not your time, Jack Sparrow. You should not have come if you do not mean to stay."

"What?" said Jack. Inarticulate, perhaps, but (he decided) wholly appropriate in the circumstances.

"What, _what_?" retorted the greybeard. "Are you as deaf as I am blind, friend? Because I thought I was being quite inelegantly straightforward." He crossed his arms, his mouth turning downward sulkily.

"Here," said Smee, "how'd he know your name, Cap'n?"

"Heard of me, of course," Jack muttered over his shoulder. "Hush;" and he turned to the blind man. "How do you know my name?" he demanded.

"The sand's run out," said the man in eldritch tones, ignoring Jack's question with what appeared to be immense satisfaction. "But she'll turn the glass again."

"He's a rum one," offered Sandy, in a low voice. "Looks daft. We should be getting on, like you said."

"Hush," said Jack again, and addressed the madman once again. "Tell me, mate, as you seem to know so much, why do some of the folk go all see-through here when others don't?"

"Drinkers from the left-hand pool," came the answer. "They have forgotten their names and all they were in life. Now they are only shadows and scraps and the memories of other men."

"Oh." Jack grimaced. "Stay like that forever, do they?"

"No time at all, to them, until the glass turns," said the other; and abruptly he seemed to stare out past them, whence they had come, so that they all turned, involuntarily, to follow his blind gaze. "Keep a weather eye, Sparrow," he said, under his breath, so that Jack had to lean forward to catch all the words. "There will be white wings ere long, on a dark horizon. I have seen her, there…"

This curious warning stirred some half-remembered echo in Jack's mind, and he was about to press for an explanation; but the blind man had dropped his chin back on his chest, sinking into the same brown study from which Jack had roused him, a clear dismissal. And when Jack prodded him tentatively with one finger, he said without stirring but with much irritation,

"For gods' sake, man, do I have to spell it out for you? Well, too bad, then. Good for you youngsters to do a bit of interpretation now and again, _I_ say. Might give you a bit of respect for the art of the thing. Now leave off your poking and fidgeting. I'm busy."

Jack considered him for a moment, thoughtfully; then he shook himself a little, and looked round at the other sailors, who were staring back at him rather doubtfully.

"Right then," he said. "Let's be getting on with it, shall we?"

"Did you understand any of that, Cap'n?" asked Smee, as they took their leave. "What was he saying there, about the glass and the sand and the house of judgment? I couldn't get a handle on it at all, meself."

"Just a lot of nonsense, I daresay," said Jack, uneasily. "Completely mad, poor old coot. Not a whit of meaning in any of it."

* * *

"Jesus, Mary, and Joseph," breathed Doctor Miller. They were gathered in a little knot at the entrance of a high-ceilinged hall; at its far end, a dais upon which two silent figures sat on two ornate black thrones, and below the dais, three seats, where the grim judges waited.

"Wrong pantheon, I'm afraid," said Jack. "These folk have been around a bit longer, if I'm not mistaken. Looks like the pagans had it right after all, eh?"

"More like we wasn't good enough to make it to the better place," said Smee, glumly.

"Cheer up, mate. There's always the final Judgment Day. Trumpets and saints and all that, or so I'm told."

Jonah scoffed. "And what d'ye think this is, Sparrow? Sheol does not give up her dead."

"Does she not?" Jack said, eying him.

"Not this time," Jonah retorted, with more than his usual bitterness; "not for me," and he would say no more.

A command echoed through the hall then, hollow and resonant and cold, like the deep caverns and secret places of the Earth itself given voice. "Come forward."

To such a voice, there answered not so much as the most fleeting thought of disobedience. Forward they came, though many of them were trembling; even Jack, who had felt those words thrum bell-like in his very bones, found himself thinking in terms of a certain poem by Donne, and asked not.

Before the dais, they halted, in some confusion.

"Your names," said the Lord of the House of Judgment, in the same cavernous tones.

Finding the others all looking at him to speak first, "Captain Jack Sparrow," said he. Just as in life, the words were his talisman, a mantra against horror and dread. His voice rang out small but steady in that Hall; and as he bowed low, his crew speaking out in turn behind him, he took the opportunity to covertly survey the occupants of the two thrones. On the right-hand side, the awful Lord, drumming his fingers on the armrest of his seat, stern and gaunt-faced, with the look about his thin mouth and sunken eyes of one who has seen and understood far too much of human suffering, and folly, and waste. On the left-hand side, his pale Queen, leaning her chin in her small white hand, remote and lovely as a late flower perfectly preserved by the first frost of winter. They looked… _bored_ , Jack realized.

He smiled.

"You'll be wanting us to account for ourselves, I suppose," said Captain Jack Sparrow.


	4. Truth And Consequences

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Part 4 of Jack's adventures in the Underworld, in which things get a bit more serious.

"And then," Jack finished triumphantly, "I grabbed hold of two macaws that just happened to be flying past, see, all unawares, and took a quick step off that wall; and they bore me right over the bay handsomely and sweetly as you please to where the Black Pearl waited, leaving the Commodore, poor git, and all his limeys gaping after me."

He had begun with the stories of his crew, styling them all heroes in their own right. Pip, the youngest and doughtiest member of the proud _Pequod_ on her final voyage, courageous to the doomed ship's last throes. Smee, the only man in the seven seas whom the notorious Jas. Hook had feared. Sandy Miller, beloved of sweet Nancy Lee, had a history that fit well to the tune of an old song Jack remembered from his youth; and Jonah—but Jonah had cut off Jack's one-man dramatization of a freak storm and an unluckily-cast lot with a fierce glare; and the intrepid storyteller, more than relieved to let that sleeping Leviathan lie, had moved hastily on to the famously ever-growing Legend of Jack Sparrow.

"Macaws, you say," said Lord Hades now, politely; but the barest vestige of a smile seemed to hover on his lips.

"Aye," said Jack. "Prettiest pair of birds you ever saw, and as they dropped me on the deck and flew away, they called back to me, 'Fair winds to you and following seas, Captain Sparrow!'"

The Lady and Lord glanced at each other; and surely that had been a look of amusement exchanged between them. Jack grinned at them. This was going rather well, after all, he decided.

And then the Lady laughed.

The sound pierced the hearts of the watching shades with beauty, and filled their veins with ice. "You spin a fine tale, Jack Sparrow," she said. "Now let us hear the truth."

"I'd rather not, if it's all the same to you," Jack said, taken aback. "It's quite tedious, really. And 'tis not a story fit for the ears of a refined and high-born lady such as yourself--"

"You forget who you are speaking to," said the Queen, and her face had changed: beautiful still, but distant, implacable; and her eyes were the absence of all light. He could not hold her black gaze then, but had to look away, lest he fall into the abyss waiting there.

Instead, he stared down at the gleaming tiles of the floor—black and white stone, in alternating chessboard squares—and essayed to relate, flatly, the unembellished facts of his sorry life; or what he could remember of it.

For it seemed…well, it was a lifetime ago, now; but the details seemed curiously remote to him, as if it had been someone else's lifetime. A stranger's, who had little or naught at all to do with him; he found himself struggling to disentangle the truth from the layered strands of his own and others' hyperbole, invention, myth. Was it only that he had told so many versions over the years? He recalled, with sudden clarity, the words of the blind seer; and, his mouth gone inexplicably dry, began to speak urgently and in earnest.

He spoke of how he had spent his earliest years aboard his father's ship; how Teague Sparrow had sent him back to his mother's family to live a better life, in which polite society and breeding was beat into him when it didn't stick; of his apprenticeship to the mapmaker in Portsmouth; of the moment he decided to run away to sea again. Of the day he'd met his father as a grown man, face to face, and how the old reprobate didn't recognize him at first, was startled at Jack's blind fury for a long-ago abandonment. He'd joined the East Indian Trading Company soon afterwards, not least out of spite; had enjoyed a meteoric rise to captaincy, taken those first few steps along the deck of his _Wicked Wench_ , and fallen completely, hopelessly, in love.

And received the sailing orders for the nightmare voyage that had changed everything.

Even so many years later, in a different world, it took some effort to tell of that cargo, to think of it: the wide, dull, hopeless eyes of the slaves, the welts on their backs from the whip and on their wrists and ankles from the shackles, the holds of his beloved ship grown putrid with the stench of death and of despair. If other images of his past were hazy here and distant, facts and legend blurring into one another, he could still, by some cruel trick of memory, see each and every one of their faces.

What could he have done, but set them all free? He couldn't let the _Wench_ become that horror, the antithesis of all she was to him. He would have never been able to get the smell and the stains out of her boards, had he chosen otherwise.

Just a few words left now: profits lost. Beckett's rage. Black smoke billowing from the ports of the _Wench_ , orange fire swallowing her sails, the sea swallowing all. A Devil's bargain; the blackened _Wench_ raised, reborn as his _Pearl_ of great price--yet one so easy to pay, then, thirteen years as good as a lifetime to foolish youth, and none so foolish as his own. The compass, bartered from one of the women he had freed, a sly-eyed witch called Dalma. Betrayal; marooning; ten years of bitterness; and then, unexpectedly, hope, in the form of a young man who carried the blood of a pirate in his veins. One shining year of freedom, before Fate caught up with him in the person of a young lady who had the heart of a pirate in her comely breast, and the cold fire of his destruction and salvation in her eyes.

"Not so very unlike you, my Lady," he added, with a wry smile. "A force against which no resistance can be mounted, she was."

"You are not angry?"

He shrugged. "Why should I be? The lass did what was right by her and hers, is all, and made sure I'd do the same. 'Twas my debt to pay, and I know that well enough." He dared to raise his eyes to the Queen's face and found he could bear her regard once more, impenetrable though it was as the marble of her throne. "She had all the courage I lacked, in the end. If the full truth be told, Majesty, it must be that I'm no hero; and I never was much known for being an honest man."

But the Lady laughed again; this time, it was like a spring morning.

"It is rare," she said, "that we should see before us a man who is so universally alleged to be far _less_ honest than he truly is."

"I try to tell people that," Jack grumbled, "but none of 'em ever believe me."

The Lady inclined her head. "And it is even more rare for a man to honestly believe himself to be less honest than he truly is." With that, she rose—drawing a startled glance from her husband and a murmur of astonishment from the three Judges, who had kept their silence throughout the fabulous narrative as well as the true one—and descended the steps of the dais to stand before Jack, a tall, slender, stately figure.

"I'm afraid you've lost me there, milady," he said, wondering whether he should be more flattered or worried at this obviously unusual attention from Lady Death herself; but she caught hold of one uncertainly hovering hand, ignoring the look of alarm he shot her. Her grip was gentle and cool, and inexorable.

"It seems, Captain Sparrow," she said, "that you have lived something of a hero's life, though you are loath to claim it; and despite your best efforts to the contrary, have managed to die a hero's death as well."

"Does it?" he said, warily, and "Have I, then?" –though hope had sprung up in his heart, and it was all he could do to keep from grinning; for the final die had not yet been cast.

And it was at that moment—or so he swore when he told the tale, afterwards; and, after all, why would he not tell the truth?—it was at that moment that Jack saw the Queen of the Dead tilt her pretty dark head in a spill of shining ringlets, and wink saucily at him.

It almost struck him speechless; almost. He hesitated for just an instant, in which he could not determine if he had imagined that conspiratorial look, or not. There was no hint of mischief on her face now, only the impassive countenance of a patient sovereign. Still…

"Perhaps I have, at that," he agreed. "There're even those who've been known to suggest I am…was…have been a good man. From time to time," though privately he rather doubted their powers of judgment as well as their authority in such matters.

She nodded. "And indeed, the same cannot be said of all men who are called heroes." So saying, she turned smiling to the Judges, who had bent their grey heads together in whispered counsel. And suddenly she seemed no more awful to Jack than a girl delighted by the prospect of a new toy or a beguiling pet; although her voice was grave, it seemed to brim with suppressed laughter. "You have heard the testimony, my Lords," she said. "What is your verdict?"

"As you plead on his behalf, my Lady," said the first Judge, not without a glimmer of humor, "it hardly seems that we have any choice but one."

"It appears to me," said the second, dryly, "that such a man will only stir up trouble among the common spirits if left to his own devices in the Fields."

"He is no worse," grunted the last, "than any of the other scoundrels we have sent to Fiddler's Green."

"So that's settled, then," Jack said quickly. "You see, lads? Fiddler's Green it is. We'll just be on our way, if you'll excuse us, gentlemen, milady—"

"Not just yet, Sparrow." The Lord had not raised his voice, but somehow those four quiet words reached every corner of the hall, stilling the spiders in the webby dimness of the ceiling beams, and Jack in mid-turn; he saw the Lady, who had been looking toward him, make a little moue of dismay.

 _Oh._

"And you, my Lady," the Lord continued. "Does my judgment matter so little to you, that you do not even see fit to ask me for it?"

"I did not think," she answered, "that you would object to mine, just to spite me."

"Not to spite you," said Hades. "Consider, my dearest. This impudent shade has come here, and brought these others with him, in direct defiance to the Law. He should never have gotten this far—and Sparrow, it has not escaped my notice that you grievously wronged my loyal servant the Boatman by cheating him out of the fare he was owed. But perhaps you knew that once you reach this Hall, we are bound to hear your claims."

"I had no idea," Jack said. "Or was that a rhetorical question?"

The Lord's granite-grey eyes—which had been fixed on his unrepentant bride—shifted back to Jack, widening in mild surprise; he frowned slightly. "Then you must be a fool, or mad."

"Or very bold," said the Lady, smiling again.

"By rights," said the Lord, "he should be sent back to the other side of the river. And the rest with him."

"Perhaps," she said. "Still, it seems a pity, when they have come so far."

"You know," said her husband, wearily, "that I do not make the Law."

"And I also know that you are charged with its interpretation."

"Which does not mean that I am free to change its letter at my whim."

There followed a charged pause, during which the Lady and Lord of the Underworld exchanged a long glance, and the Lord appeared to wrestle with both a knotty decision and an expression which was not as awful nor habitual a glower as he had perhaps intended it to be. Jack began to suspect that it rather tended towards a smirk.

"On the other hand," said Hades, "it has been a very long time since I have heard my Lady laugh..."


	5. Fiddler's Green

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Part 5 of Jack's adventures in the Underworld, in which Jack achieves his ends--or does he?

"Well, the place is _sua sidera norunt_ , all right," Jack grumbled, casting a distrustful glance upwards at those alien constellations, "but where's its bloody _solemque suum_ , eh?"

No one else in that country seemed much bothered by the missing sun, however, nor expectant of approaching day. Countless lanterns hanging from leafless poplars cast a pale light across the fields, and here and there bonfires flared, though they burned without heat, undying. The long tables were crowded with ghosts, and above the drifting echoes of laughter and conversation, a fiddle skirled high and wild and never stopped, pursued by the notes of a lyre, a sailor's penny-whistle, and now Pip's tambourine. The dancers spun to a tune like a frantic dirge, a cheerful air switched to a minor key. Jack's companions had melted into the crowd; he thought he saw the young surgeon with his arm around a pretty female shade, and glimpsed red-faced Smee in energetic mid-jig.

"Welcome, friend!" A sun-weathered, jovial man, black-haired and clad in tunic and sandals, emerged from the crush of celebrants to wrap Jack in a bear hug.

"Who are you?" Jack demanded, taken aback.

"I'm your host here, sailor." The man grinned broadly, offered his hand. "Ulisse, they call me. Among other names."

Jack blinked; recovered himself. "Ah. Of course they do." He shook the proffered hand. "Captain Jack Sparrow. Of the _Black Pearl_. Er…formerly."

"So I've heard," the Greek said. "News travels quickly in the Underworld. We don't have much else to do but gossip here."

"I thought you might have heard of me," Jack said, modestly. Maybe the place wasn't so bad, lack of _solemque_ notwithstanding. "From one legend to another, it's an honor, mate."

"The honor's mine," said the other, and threw a friendly arm around Jack's shoulders, guiding him towards the trestle tables. "Come, let me introduce you to our company. They'll wish to have a round with you, and drink to your health."

Which seemed a funny thing to drink to when a man was dead; but, "Far be it from me to deny 'em the pleasure," Jack said happily. "Lead on, me Virgilian friend. Or is that Homeric? Always wondered which version of you ran closer to the truth."

Odysseus glanced at him and laughed. "What do you think, brother Sparrow?"

"All," Jack said. "And none, aye?"

"Aye," said his host. "But the only tales that matter here are those a man tells himself."

"And if he lies?"

"If he lies," Odysseus said, "who then remains, to remember what was true?"

* * *

The toast was made, hearty and loud, and in the midst of it Jack found himself the recipient of a piercing, hawklike gaze from the only man who would not take rum in his cup.

"I knew your father, boy," said this gentleman, gruffly, when the crowd had dispersed somewhat. "Tell me, does he still keep my Code?"

Jack, still recovering from an onslaught of slaps to the back, staggered a little.

"Black Bart," he said. "Well, I'll be."

"That's Captain Roberts to you," Bartholomew said. "I remember you when you were a tarry little rascal in short pants, and I'll take no lip from you. How is Teague, that old profligate? Still ranting and roaring to beat Methuselah?"

"As far as I know," Jack said, evasively, battling the impulse to shift from foot to foot like a small boy.

"Shrugged off your filial ties, have you?" The gentleman pirate pinned him with a shrewd look. "Well, I'm not surprised. He's a good man in his way, but a hard one, and more so since your ma passed this way. Wasn't much he wouldn't trade to the Devil for a dram of rum or opium, after that. For awhile, we all thought he'd follow her down, haunt the Queen's halls with music until She gave him back his Isobel."

Jack glanced up quickly. "Is she—"

"Here?" Captain Roberts shook his head. "Not in the Green, lad, though I've looked for her meself. But there be many Fields here, and many souls, and you might find her yet."

Jack thought of the dreadful relics Teague wore on his person, and grimaced. "No," he said. "I expect I won't, actually." He offered his hand to Roberts. "Delightful talking to you, Captain. I can assure you my father keeps the Code." _Among other things._

He made his escape, and went to find more rum. The first cup hadn't had much effect, and after that interview he found he devoutly wished himself far drunker. There were some things a man really didn't want to know about one's dearly beloved parents, and once you knew them, you couldn't _un_ know them. Unless you had enough rum, which he didn't. But in the back of his mind, an as yet amorphous idea had started to form, something to do with the old, dark myth Captain Roberts had touched upon.

Something about things that come back.

* * *

"Your heart's not here in the dance with us, me lad," said Granuaile.

"Sorry, love," Jack said, and spun her round until she laughed, breathless as a girl even though she was a pirate queen and a shade, and begged him to stop.

"I'm not so easily distracted, Jackie-boy. I didn't die yesterday, you know. Now, where have you left that black and wicked heart of yours? Not back in the cruel world above, I hope?"  
.  
"I wish I knew," he said. "If a ship had a soul, Lady Grace, where might I find her in this country?"

"Ah," she said, and stood still; he saw sadness and understanding in her eyes. "Perhaps that is a question for a different Lady. I am only an old warrior, _agrah_."

"Not _only_ ," Jack said, "and certainly not old," but when the dance was over and he had bowed and thanked her, his rogue's grin slipped and he grew grave. She watched him thoughtfully as he walked away.

"There goes one whose story is not over," she said to Erik the Red.

The Viking grunted into his mead. "There goes a fool," he said. "What more could he want from Death than this?"

* * *

In the center of Death's garden grew an ancient tree, the only green and living thing in that whole wide shadowland; its roots were watered by two pools, dark and still and deep, that lay on either side, and its gnarled branches reached up towards the otherworldly sky, its crown lost in the mists. Jack found the Lady walking there, a rosy-husked fruit from the tree in her white hand. When she turned to him, her half-smile was sad and sweet and a little wry, and he knew it was not meant for him but for whatever strange, unguessed-at memory or knowledge might preoccupy the Queen of Shadows.

"I did not think you would be back to visit me so soon, Captain Sparrow," she said, voice gay enough despite the private sorrow he'd glimpsed in her face. "Is your Fiddler's Green not all you hoped for, then?"

"'S'not that," Jack said. "It's more than I'd hoped for, really. But I think mayhaps I wasn't hoping for the right things, if you know what I mean," and he hoped she did, because he hardly knew what he meant himself.

"You miss the sea," she said softly. "But you wanted peace. You wanted to stop running. It's a kind of freedom."

"Not without _her_ , it isn't."

She frowned. "You know that you are asking the impossible," she said. "It is not her time, and I cannot send you back to the other side."

"Not _that_ her. _My_ her," Jack said, abandoning grammar altogether.

"Your vessel?" the Lady said, bemused. "You have left her behind as surely as the other. Ships have no souls."

"This one does," Jack said. "If she had none of her own, she at least had part of mine."

"Even so." She beckoned him to follow her to the edge of the right-hand pool, where she bent and skimmed her fingers across the surface, and said, "Look."

The ripples moved outward, and left behind a shimmering image, like a reflection, like a memory. Black sails hanging limp in still air, hull aground and listing in grey-white sand.

"There," said Jack, breathless, although that didn't much matter here, he supposed. "You see, she's not gone. That's my beauty, sound and whole as she ever was." He turned to the Lady. "Can I go there?"

She seemed startled. "You wish to return to the Locker? For that is where your Pearl lies: the outermost border of that place and of my country, where neither ghost goes nor man, between the worlds. You'll find only a madness there that would wear the strongest spirit into sand, into the waste." Her voice softened, tempered with regret. "And it would be a waste indeed for one like yourself to pass away that way, lost forever beyond even my power to save."

"I'll risk it," Jack said. "I've been mad before. Maybe I still am. Let me go to her, good Lady. After all, the Locker's where your law would have me, dead at sea and soul owed still to Davy Jones. I'm only here at all upon your very great kindness; surely you could do me the very small kindness—the cruelty, really—of putting me back where I belong?"

"A passionate argument," she said, "from one who has been recently reprieved, begging to be condemned again." And she looked at him with a shadow of the look she'd given him when he'd stood before her the first time; the gaze from which no truth, no matter how shameful, could be hidden. "What do you really ask of me, Jack Sparrow?"

He hesitated; fidgeted; and decided there was nothing for it. "I met an old blind gentleman on the road," he said, "who led me to believe my citizenship in your kingdom—lovely as it is," he added hastily, "would not be permanent. That the glass would be turned for me, so to speak. Or at least, so he spoke, in his funny way. Seemed like he knew me, and I thought I should know him, only I didn't."

"Tiresias spoke to you?" she said sharply.

Jack snapped his fingers. "That's it!" he cried. "I knew he seemed familiar. Out of some epic or other. Of course. Tiresias it was, and he most certainly did. He said there would be white wings on the horizon for me. Told me to keep an eye out."

She frowned. "Then there is some thread in the weft which is not known to me," she said, "for the Seer is never wrong, though he sounds mad to some and strange to most."

Turning from him, she bent as she had before to trouble the deep well of memory. Jack tried to peer over her shoulder, but the images playing on the water's surface flashed too quickly for his mind to comprehend, light and darkness twining together in intricate patterns like the delicate tracings of frost on a windowpane in winter, or unwinding in spirals through the helices of a great, labyrinthine conch.

The Lady said, "Ah," and the pool was still again, but a face lingered there for a fraction of a moment; Jack thought he knew it, or half-knew it, but before he could name it, it too was gone. "It seems," she said, "that there is indeed a pattern left unfinished, Captain Sparrow. A great wrong that must be unraveled and made right, a part that only you can play, for gods and mortals too. And so they come for you, all the way to the end of the world." She straightened. "I will send you back, if you are willing. But there will be a price of sorts."

"Naturally," said Jack, and tried to think what she might want of him. "There always is. What is it, then?"

"Just this," said the Queen of the Underworld, and smiled. Jack did not entirely like that smile; he had forgotten, perhaps--and now remembered--that it was a goddess he dealt with, and the most powerful of her ilk, keeper of all things dark. Her next words did not reassure him in the least. "You are still mine, Jack Sparrow. I will let you cross the river; I will allow those who seek your help to cross the last bar and find you on the shore. But only with the knowledge that you will return to me."

She seemed to have grown taller, and her voice rang with the force of geäs, of prophecy. He could feel it take hold, as if she'd reached out and wrapped fingers of ice and steel around his soul; he felt afraid, truly afraid in new and different ways than he'd ever felt before, and yet he could not move.

"The opportunity will present itself," she said, "and you will be tempted by the thought that you might cheat me of what is mine. Oh, do not shake your head. Do you think I do not know you? But as long as you seek to defy me by gaining immortality in the world, you will find yourself bereft of all else that you hold dear, and betrayed by Fate, even as She has often favored you; until you turn from your defiance, and content yourself with the time allotted to you."

Jack swallowed. "And may I ask how long might that be, my Lady?"

"One man's lifetime, and one only," she answered. "Time enough to live more stories; many more, I hope, for when you are done you shall sit in my hall and tell them all to me."

Her aspect changed as she said it, and she was a young girl once more, eagerly delighted at the prospect of hearing new tales of adventure, of the sea, of freedom. He looked into her lovely face and thought of what he knew of this half of her nature: eternal youth eternally bound to a dark place, able to walk only a few short months in the light.

Clearing his throat, he said, "We have an accord."

Persephone clapped her hands in joy; and then she leaned forward and kissed him full on the mouth. He tasted for a long moment the tart, aching sweetness of pomegranates, bright as the first afternoon of spring, sharp as the last morning of autumn.

Then true night fell, and he tasted nothing at all.

* * *

 _It wasn't so bad, being brought from death to life. Simple, really. Nothing to it._

 _No, that was utterly a lie. It was bad: pure agony like lightning, and the sick crack of bones setting themselves beneath torn flesh, while his brain sparked into consciousness in cold flashes of panic. It lasted for as long as he could remember, and he missed the darkness that had come before, where there had been no more running, only rest..._

* * *

He woke with a groan, his cheek pressed against cool, black boards, the grip of his pistol digging painfully into his hip. The light was searing, the air breathless as a tomb, the deck steady as a rock under his prostrate body.

He'd had, he thought, a very long, interesting but convoluted dream, of which the details were rapidly disappearing. Something about pomegranates and a blind man on the road who needed directions. Or no, the blind man had given him directions, though to what and whence he had no idea anymore....But that made no sense at all. Only a fool would ask a blind man to show them the way, and he wasn't a fool, now, was he?

He lifted his head. Nothing moved. He was completely alone.

"Well, I don't feel dead," he said, experimentally. No one answered, which was more or less what he had expected. He looked around him.

Everything was just as it ought to be; except it wasn't. The Kraken had broken that masthead, had plunged its tentacles through his cabin door and out the long windows at the stern, had ripped the rigging and sails to shreds and left broken bodies in its wake along the deck. But the _Black Pearl_ bore not a trace of the destruction Davy Jones' beast had wrought. She lay serene, dark and shining in the merciless white light that seemed to come from everywhere and nowhere at once.

For that matter, _he_ was whole and alive, not drowned or eaten. He took a quick inventory; the evidence indicated he was definitely alive. His breath poured in and out of his lungs, the only air that seemed to move at all; the blood beat in his ears; he felt a headache niggling behind his left eye from the unholy glare. Just to be sure, he reached down; yes, his bits were still there. Always a relief. He stood up, slowly, stiff from lying for so long (how long?) on the unyielding boards, hearing a crack or two as his joints grudgingly accepted his weight.

"Hello?" he said. "Oi! Anyone there?"

Nothing. Not even a creak from the _Pearl_ 's boards.

With a growing sense of apprehension, he wandered over to the rail.

An expanse of blinding white sand stretched out to meet the blinding horizon in all directions, featureless and flat. No water to be seen, not even a mirage of waves, not a bird or a creature of any kind, anywhere.

"Oh, _bugger_ ," said Captain Jack Sparrow.


End file.
